Thursday, January 25, 2018

Walking Down the Time

Muhammad Rasheed - As I sit here patiently counting
down the time to when I’ll be released from my Facebook ban, I analyze the
specific technique used to silence my efforts to use my art to fight the
diabolical White Supremacist Ideology and its willing supporters. I posted a
cartoon which illustrated a point I made during a #WhenTheAliensCome discussion, and over the next few days a legion
of white supremacists showed up to complain and ridicule me. Nearly drunk on
all of the triggered drama they provided for me to cartoon later, it didn’t
take long before I was banned the first time for 24 hrs. I promptly sent a
protest report to Facebook to let them know I was an editorial cartoonist who
was being harassed by extremists weaponizing their auto-report system to
monopolize Freedom of Expression for themselves. My note was either ignored by
FB Admins who were of like-minds to my dedicated enemy, or my complaint was
simply too far down in the queue to do me much good. In any event, only a
couple hours or so after that ban I was banned again, this time for seven days,
in which I now count down the remaining hours.

Once banned, the
white supremacists immediately started filling up my cartoon with taunts and
vitriol to which I couldn’t immediately respond. To my delight though, I found
that I still retained the ability to delete posts and ban people! I used this
power freely to prevent the enemy from controlling the narrative of what was
going on, removing all posts that (“Well, actually…”) sought to matter of fact
proclaim lies as definitive truths to indoctrinate the readers.Not on MY page you’re not. I left all the
comments though that I intended to address within the short time I had before
being banned again, which I fully expect since the nature of the attack is pure
cowardice. One of my favorite comments I read once the enemy realized I was
deleting posts from my invisible-silent realm, was one protesting how unfair it
was that I didn’t allow this virtual army of racist trolls to say whatever they
wished on my Art Page while I was otherwise unable to address their toxic caucasity
directly using my preferred weapons. Isn’t that one of the most classically
WHITE things you’ve ever heard? The virtual lynch mob of legions of trolls said
it was “unfair” that I used what little tools I had at my disposal to defend
myself from their literal attack on my Right to Freedom of Expression. lol This
is a sliver of the amazing nonsense we have to deal with on the grander scale
as African-Americans.

Although I don’t
expect to have very much time as a free man once this 7-day ban is lifted (I
wouldn’t be surprised if they flagged/reported every single cartoon in my Art
Page folio in efforts to get my entire account deleted), I don’t consider this
a loss. The fact that they got triggered and came on the run… from pure word-of-mouth
mind you… meant that my work is doing what it was intended to do: Speak truth
to power and force them to do some form of damage control to cover up their
newly-bared asses for the documented record. The actual content of what they
say doesn’t matter very much (they lie as their first language and can never be
trusted, since they only care about supporting white supremacy at all costs),
but the fact that they protest at all says volumes and lets me know the mission
of my art is successful. If they said nothing at all it would be one thing, of
course, but they’re the ones that ironically invented the term “triggered” in
this context, and it’s only the hurt dog that yelps.

So what is my
mission? Outside of basic entertainment, my cartoons adhere to 3 Prime
Directives, which are as follows:

1.)To Make
the Complex Simple. I believe this is true of all art, and especially the
cartoon media and its naturally inherent emphasis on glyphs, short-hands and
symbols.

2.)To Decode
the Objectives & Methods of White Supremacy. The main tool of racists is
their propaganda – using gaslighting, repetition of nonsense, subliminal
imagery, and other indoctrination techniques – to encode their toxic message
into everyone. They indoctrinate themselves to justify their actions and
convince themselves it is okay (in fact, their DUTY!) to exploit and plunder
Black people. The video below from Agyei Tyehimba describes the specific role of my
art best.

3.)To Make
the Oppressor Class Uncomfortable. As Ta-Nehisi Coates points out in the vid
below, the racist aristocracy doesn’t get to comfortably enjoy the loot
plundered from Blacks. To allow them that comfort is to throw in the towel of
cowardice, and hope they toss us a crumb. No. If you aren’t triggering them and
refusing to take their bs seriously then you are just as wrong as they are, and
count as the “good friends” who allowed evil to rage about with your silence.
The fight is a righteous fight.

I don’t know if I’ll
end up losing my Facebook account in the end, but there are other social media
outlets, and other means of distributing my work. What are the chances that FB
will make their reporting system less white racist lynch mob friendly in the near
future? This is a perfect example of the need for Black-owned media safe spaces, free of the sabotaging reach of the white racist fake patriots.

About Me

"I see the world as a multi-layered, encrypted message—encrypted for countless reasons, by numerous sources. I believe our job as actively-engaged humans is to decode these messages for our own use and to document them for the greater body of human literature at the means each individual has at hand. As an artist—specifically, a cartoonist—that is the means/medium I use for my own decoding duties. Through my research, I use logic, reason and intellect to intuitively follow the knowledge thread that intrigues me, connecting the dots from pattern recognition, and producing the cartoons that form my socio-political analysis."